Title:	The Friendsgiving Cookbook: 50 Recipes for Hosting, Roasting, and Celebrating with Friends
	Author:	Taylor Vance
	Published:	September 25, 2023, Rockpoint Publishing
	No. of Pages:	120
	Cover Price:	$9.99 Hardcover, $9.49 Kindle

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While Thanksgiving is generally a holiday for family, Taylor Vance offers her insight in making the holiday more enjoyable by reducing the stress of difficult family members and inviting just those who get along and also friends. She has suggestions in her cookbook, The Friendsgiving Cookbook: 50 Recipes for Hosting, Roasting, and Celebrating with Friends.
The recipes include appetizers and several modern ubiquitous charcuterie boards – sans the homemade dishes that are usually served on special holidays (storebought, frozen, etc.). There are also soups, sides, salads, a few mains and desserts.

Some of the recipes call for ingredients not found on most pantry shelves, refrigerators, and home freezers, such as aquafaba (chickpea water), as well as frozen store-bought items like dumplings. Some of the dessert recipes also call for things like applesauce as a substitute for butter or other fats (which make them actually taste good and have a good texture), and some call for almond flour as opposed to regular flour. It makes it seem like the author is trying to promote tree hugger ingredients and punish those who like regular food that actually tastes good, instead of the traditional ones that are found in most family’s thanksgiving recipe repertoires. Many families and friends would object, and rightly so.

The cookbook includes beautiful professional photographs of most of the recipes, and the photos make the recipes seem more appetizing that they actually are after reading the ingredients.

All told, the premise of the book is nice – inviting your friends and family members that you actually like, but minus the homemade traditional foods that everyone looks forward to. There are however, several appealing recipes that might be good on other days and at other get togethers that aren’t beloved holidays like Thanksgiving that call for traditional offerings. With only 50 recipes, readers will feel cheated; there definitely should be more.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.